[SOLVED] Asus Z97a - Crash, mobo powered but peripherals not

[bartosz.ladzinski]

Hey there,

This issue has happened to me several times, although I feel it's getting worse recently. At some point my PC crashes and then if I try to turn it on I can see the power led on and the fans are spinning, but the peripherals (screen, leds on mouse and keyboard) get no power. Then after some time I can turn it on again.

I've unplugged and plugged in all the components on the mobo except the CPU. Nothing really helped. Tested with 2 different graphics cards and 3 different RAM blocks, but to no avail. At some point the PC just decides to work. I though I fixed it the last time by resetting CMOS, but this time it didn't work.

Also for some reason the EZ XMP led is always on regardless of the position of the EZ XMP switch.

It died today then came back alive after an hour off. Then I decided to flash BIOS with the latest 3503 version. During the flashing it died again. Thought it's fried for good. Came back alive after an hour. Apparently the BIOS is updated to 3503 now.

It's really frustrating and I can't really seem to pinpoint the actual issue. So confused...

My setup:
CPU: i5 4690k
GPU: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2080
Memory: Crucial Ballistix 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600MHz 1.5V
SSD: Samsung 840 EVO - 2.5'' SSD - SATA 6G - 250 GB
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Blue, 3.5\'\', 1TB, SATA/600, 7200RPM
Motherboard: Asus Z97-A
PSU: Corsair RM Series 750W Modular 80Plus GOLD

 

[sainterion]

Since you said you could turn it on after some time, do you think you might be having overheathing issues? Have you checked your temperatures before? For the EZ XMP switch, try turning it off from bios aswell if you can. Some motherboards have that issue where it requires to turn it off from the BIOS.

In addition, do you overclock your cpu and if you do, try reverting it to default, it might get stuck on boot because of that.

 

[bartosz.ladzinski]

Since you said you could turn it on after some time, do you think you might be having overheathing issues? Have you checked your temperatures before? For the EZ XMP switch, try turning it off from bios aswell if you can. Some motherboards have that issue where it requires to turn it off from the BIOS.

In addition, do you overclock your cpu and if you do, try reverting it to default, it might get stuck on boot because of that.

I'm monitoring the temperature of my GPU and CPU and it's usually not above 70 Celsius for the GPU and 50 Celsius for the CPU. Do you know some good software I could use for monitoring other temperatures?

My XMP is disabled in BIOS and the LED was still on. However, when my PC actually boots and runs, then the LED is off.

My CPU is not overclocked. Had an issue with that before so I'm not doing it again.

 

[bartosz.ladzinski]

It looks like there is some issue when it's booting. When it actually boots successfully I can hear fans starting to spin like 2-3 times, then they actually do. But when it doesn't boot successfully the fans just start spinning from the start and nothing happens.

 

[sainterion]

You can use HWMonitor for monitoring things in your computer. Your temperatures are not dangerous if those numbers are correct. The XMP light can mean something different if it is on during the computer is off and off when you boot the computer.

For booting issues, if you can not reach to bios at all, there can me many things wrong that you would have to check, such as cpu, ram, motherboard itself, even your cables that supply the power. However, if you can manage to boot the computer successfully from time to time, that means your cpu is not faulty, your windows "may"be corrupted, your bios "may"be corrupted and etc.

I would start with trying to update the bios.

 

[bartosz.ladzinski]

You can use HWMonitor for monitoring things in your computer. Your temperatures are not dangerous if those numbers are correct. The XMP light can mean something different if it is on during the computer is off and off when you boot the computer.

For booting issues, if you can not reach to bios at all, there can me many things wrong that you would have to check, such as cpu, ram, motherboard itself, even your cables that supply the power. However, if you can manage to boot the computer successfully from time to time, that means your cpu is not faulty, your windows "may"be corrupted, your bios "may"be corrupted and etc.

I would start with trying to update the bios.

I installed HWMonitor and was monitoring the temperatures while playing some games. Everything looked pretty normal, then I went to eat something, came back and everything was already turned off.

Tried booting it up but all the lights would only flash for a split of second and it would stay off. I unplugged everything again from the mobo and replugged it, tried my 2nd graphics card, tried to run only one RAM block, but it would continue to only flash lights and die. Then suddenly it started again, but of course, no power on the peripherals. After 15 minutes, it's back working again.

I'm really confused. What else should I check and how? Do you have any ideas?

https://imgur.com/a/JtgSEHf

Btw, these are the readings from HWMonitor. The readings on TMPIN4 are a bit weird as it basically shows 0, 57, 118 or 244. I think that's just an error, but who knows?

 

[bartosz.ladzinski]

So in the end it was the power supply dying. Got a new one and that solved all my problems.